Your Views: Walker’s leadership moving state forward

Gov. Walker’s pro-growth agenda continues to move Wisconsin in the right direction. During the last six months, Wisconsin’s economy saw its strongest job growth since 1997. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is the lowest it has been since 2008, at 6.3 percent, after 40,000 new jobs were added in 2013.

Walker’s 2013-2015 budget includes nearly $1 billion in tax relief, including $100 million in property tax relief. This is the third year in which property taxes have decreased, compared to a 27 percent increase in the decade before 2011.

Walker invests $380 million in new state funds aimed to enhance public education throughout Wisconsin, including a $300 per-student increase in state aid. Walker opened the Parental Choice Program to all school districts, allowing more families at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level to choose the schools that are best for their children.

Walker signed into law a two-year tuition cap for the UW System and the first public program in the nation that will help the 25 percent of Wisconsinites who have earned college credit, but not degrees, to get access to affordable and flexible courses that can improve their skills.

Walker invested $100 million in workforce development initiatives intended to provide workers the skills necessary to gain employment in the modern economy.

For the first time, every Wisconsinite living in poverty will be covered under Medicaid, shoring up the safety net for the vulnerable.